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Skateboard Aesthetics on Two Wheels

CHOP SHOP Lee Bender, center, with Fred Ost, left, and Kipp Lathers in the workshop with the modified motorcycles of Rick Eusey and Mr. Bender.Credit
Greg E. Andrews for The New York Times

Indianapolis

WHEN Lee Bender learned in 2007 that he had multiple sclerosis, he knew right away that his all-consuming passion of nearly 20 years, skateboarding, would no longer be possible.

“I was sponsored, skating quite a bit, traveling quite a bit, but that all came to an end,” he said, referring to his time on tour representing skate gear makers. “My balance is off, so anything that rolls underneath my feet is completely foreign feeling.”

What rolls underneath his seat is a different story.

Though his own transition from four wheels to two was compelled somewhat by circumstance, Mr. Bender, a wiry, tattooed, 31-year-old from northeast Indiana, was not alone among skateboarders who have found new expressions of freedom in motorcycles.

“On a baseball team, you’ve got a coach yelling at you, ‘go faster, do this, do that,’” he said. “With skateboarding, I could do whatever I wanted.”

And at least one motorcycle maker has noted the similar mind-sets of skaters and riders. Harley-Davidson is using star skateboarders to promote a new variation of its Sportster model.

“We definitely looked at what these guys were doing and what other guys were doing, and what we saw was this trend toward raw and stripped down,” said Paul James, director of product communications at Harley-Davidson.

For skateboarders who grew up dodging cars — and often, the security guards who looked after their impromptu practice spots — the requirements of a good bike can be reasonably straightforward: a durable machine that makes the trip to and from the skate park but doesn’t draw too much attention, the deafening blast of its modified exhaust pipes notwithstanding.

Then there are the skateboarders whose urge to build something more personalized extends to motorcycles. The bikes are customized, but rarely are they chrome cruisers with stretched-out front ends and the high-rise handlebars known as ape-hangers. These are sleek stripped-down machines, recalling a style, popular after World War II, in which owners chopped away excess to make their bikes leaner and faster.

Whether it’s a Honda CB350 whittled to the frame in the style of a café racer or a 1960s Harley, stripped of its fenders and fitted with a “panhead” engine, there is a bare-bones aesthetic to many of the machines. Typical design features of the genre include custom handlebars, fenderless front wheels, suspensions shorn of all extraneous brackets and no-frills seating for just one person.

Mr. Bender’s bike started as a 1996 Harley-Davidson Sportster; chrome plating had been lavished on its engine. Today, the engine is just about the only part original to the bike, and most of its chrome has been stripped off.

His modifications include a new low-slung frame, a vestigial wind deflector fashioned from a section of rear fender and handlebars that are startlingly narrow — just 16 and a half inches wide.

“What gets me is bikes that have been modified,” Mr. Bender said. “Stock Harleys are boring. It’s kind of like going to Wal-Mart and buying a skateboard.”

In some ways, an overlap of the skater and biker subcultures seems almost inevitable. Long gone are the days when skateboarders all resembled landlocked surfers, with fluorescent knee pads and long baggy “board shorts.” Today, skateboarders are just as likely to be bearded and dressed entirely in black, tattooed to the knuckles of fingers festooned with skull rings.

More important, there’s the philosophical alignment: a shared attitude that prizes freedom and scoffs at rules, for which the road-worn renegade provides the ultimate symbol.

“Skateboarding and motorcycling kind of have the same energy to them, where, if I want to go out and ride I go out and ride, either on a skateboard or a motorcycle,” said Rick Eusey, a wild-haired 27-year-old, tattooed from knuckles to throat, who is a longtime friend of Mr. Bender’s. “I end up just doing my thing. I don’t need anybody else around.”

Mr. Eusey started skating at a young age and eventually earned sponsorships and took part in professional skate tours. He shared a house here with Mr. Bender until last month, when they rode their motorcycles to San Francisco, where Mr. Bender works at an auto glass shop and Mr. Eusey works the door at a bar.

The previous owner of Mr. Eusey’s 1999 Sportster 1200 had added lots of chrome parts, big accessory lights and a large gas tank.

“Basically, I went through, stripped off everything that I could,” he said. “What I’ve tried to do is make it as bare-bones as possible.”

Inspired by 1970s style trends, Mr. Eusey’s front brake and fender were removed. The factory seat was replaced with a solo perch and the gas tank is back to its original size. The custom handlebars are forward-mounted and only about 15 inches wide — well suited to maneuvering through tight spots.

“Everything fits within my shoulders, so it’s kind of like a cat’s whiskers,” he said. “I know my body width, and my bike’s skinnier than that, so if I can see myself going through it, the bike’s going through it, too.”

And there is usually a skateboard strapped to the back, along with a raccoon tail or a section of deer spine.

The design theme skateboarders often strive for is distinct from “rat bikes,” a breed that fetishizes matte finishes over glossy paint and rust over chrome. There is a “Road Warrior” quality to many skaters’ bikes. Mr. Eusey’s Harley, for example, has a hatchet bolted to the frame (handy when camping out) and foot pegs made from railroad spikes. But elegant flourishes often emerge: he recently repainted his gas tank in a psychedelic wild cherry sparkle finish accented by tiny flakes of silver and stripes of gold.

The crossover of skateboarding’s design culture to motorcycles has been embraced by Harley-Davidson. A promotional video for a new model in the Sportster line, the Forty-Eight, features skateboard heroes like Leo Romero, Heath Kirchart, Brian Hansen and Matt Ball. And the Forty-Eight — named for the year Harley introduced its first small “peanut” gas tank, according to Mr. James, the Harley public relations official — comes tailored with some of the styling elements favored by skaters and other young riders, including a solo seat, forward-mounted controls, a 2.1-gallon peanut tank — and it’s available in a matte black finish.

“The trend is certainly broader than skateboarding, but I feel like it started there — maybe it’s purest there,” Mr. James said, noting that the enthusiasm seems to have spread to groups like snowboarders as well. “Skateboarding could very well be the epicenter. There’s no question that there are huge parallels there between bikers and skateboarders.”

Max Schaaf, a longtime professional skateboarder and owner of 4Q Conditioning, a customizing shop in Oakland, Calif., is widely regarded as one of the most influential figures in skateboarding and custom bike building.

Mr. Schaaf hand-builds and paints his customer’s bikes, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars. Their elegance lies not in ostentation — this is not an overhyped chopper shop from cable TV — but in their minimalism. Every visible part seems to have an equally visible function; the pieces are as gorgeous and meditative as they are spare and athletic.

“The perfect bike is one where every part is exactly where it belongs,” Mr. Schaaf said.

It’s also an aesthetic that, like a Rodin sculpture, does not disguise its handicraft. “You do see the welds, you see where the pieces are put together, the weld just looks right,” he said. “Someone building a concours vehicle, they would never have a weld being shown.”

Such easy grace can be rebellious in the steroidal motorcycle culture. Mr. Schaaf’s spare designs make him something of an outsider in the biking world, while, ironically, drawing inspiration from 1960s biker gangs.

“They just nailed it so hard around ’65, ’66,” he said. “The parts were cheap and they were terrorizing those bikes. It was lawless and ruleless and your bike had your little personality on it.”

Technology seems to have played a role in bringing the cultures together. Popular blogs like Mr. Schaaf’s devote as much space to romanticizing an outlaw past of roving gangs and studded leather as they do documenting their authors’ custom work, travels and ruminations. The glamour is evident, the access as easy as turning on a laptop.

Mr. Schaaf guessed that about 80 percent of his e-mail at 4Q comes from skateboarders. Many of them cite fathers who were bikers — a past they rejected as young skateboarders, but with which they have since discovered deep commonalities.

“In the last five years, something definitely has happened,” he said. “It’s not a bunch of skateboarders who want to be bikers. We’re just wired a certain way. For some reason the death and danger are just a part of us.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 18, 2010, on Page AU1 of the New York edition with the headline: Skateboard Aesthetics, Riding on Two Wheels. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe